Opinion: U.S. needs to use all leverage to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power

by Boris Epshteyn, Chief Political Analyst

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks at a news conference during his visit for the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday Sept. 20, 2017, in New York. President Donald Trump said he has made a decision on whether to walk away from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran but refused to say what it is, setting the stage for a particularly contentious meeting of the parties to the agreement. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Boris Epshteyn formerly served as a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign and served in the White House as Special Assistant to The President and Assistant Communications Director for Surrogate Operations.

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) - A nuclear Iran. That is a prospect that we cannot allow to become reality.

The nuclear deal was a trade of Iran promising to limit its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of crippling economic sanctions, along with almost $2 billion in cold hard cash that was sent to Iran.

President Donald Trump has been very outspoken on his view of the agreement. Now he may decertify Iran’s compliance altogether.

Has Iran truly stopped working toward a nuclear bomb? In my opinion, it has not.

Most recently, in an interview with Reuters, the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano stated it is not able to verify whether Iran is or is not developing nuclear explosive technology.

Decertification by the president would mean that the U.S. Congress will be free to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

Those sanctions, in turn, will hopefully cause Iran to come to the table and negotiate a deal which would actually stop their nuclear ambitions and ballistic missile capabilities.

It is only under such an agreement that we can feel some level of safety from an Iranian nuclear threat.

Here is the bottom line: the current nuclear agreement is dangerous because it allows Iran to grow its military and nuclear might while being free from economic sanctions. The United States should use decertification and all other leverage to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.